{"id":696332,"date":"2026-04-03T18:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/696332\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T18:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:25:11","slug":"portland-trail-blazers-jump-los-angeles-clippers-to-8th-in-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/696332\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers Jump Los Angeles Clippers to 8th in West"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">With their win over the New Orleans Pelicans last night and the Los Angeles Clippers losing, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blazersedge.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> have now jumped ahead of the Clippers for the eighth seed in the Western Conference as the 2026 postseason looms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">With just four games remaining in their season, Portland (40-38) now holds a slim 0.5 game lead over the Clippers (39-38) who have five contests to go.<\/p>\n<p>Blazers\u2019 Remaining Games:<\/p>\n<p>Clippers\u2019 Remaining Games:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This matters a lot as under the NBA\u2019s play-in rules, the 7th- and 8th-seeded teams can lose their first play-in game and still make the playoffs by winning their second game (or simply win their first), while the 9th- and 10th-seeded teams need to win both of their games to make it (and cannot afford a loss).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The conference seeding implications of the Blazers and Clippers ending the season with identical records is also kind of fun to think through:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">All of this means IF the Blazers beat the Clippers on Fri. April 10 and IF both teams end the season tied, the Blazers get the 8th spot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">If the Blazers LOSE that game and both teams end the season tied, the Clippers get the 8th spot, and Portland falls to 9th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">All of this assumes the Golden State Warriors (36-41 and 3.5 games behind Portland) don\u2019t win out and the Blazers don\u2019t lose out, because &#8211; while exceedingly unlikely &#8211; it\u2019s still mathematically possible for Portland to finish lower than 9th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With their win over the New Orleans Pelicans last night and the Los Angeles Clippers losing, the Portland&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[7,37660,559,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-696332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers-news","10":"tag-clippers","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-clippers","13":"tag-laclippers","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangelesclippers","18":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116342183566622591","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}